Monday, March 23, 2015

How Hard Will It Blow?



I’m glad I took advantage of a second chance to get some paddling exercise in before the winds returned.  Right now it is gusting to 25 mph, and will keep increasing until tonight when it is supposed to be reaching 50 mph.  While on the subject of weather, I’d like to recommend a site that I’ve been using and have found to be more reliable for planning than even local weather stations.  It is called WindMapper.com.  When you pull it up, you can do two things at once.  In the top right corner, you can reference the region of the country you want.  On this site I’m using as an example, I’ve pulled up Florida and a section of the Southeast.


While the local forecast may be giving predictions for thousands of square miles, you can determine conditions right at the lake or river area you want just by putting your cursor on the arrow at that location.  A window will pop up to give you every piece of weather-related information you may want now, and for the next 48 hours.

 

The second thing would be to obtain a forecast, and it doesn’t have to be for the same area.  There is a window top-center where you type in the name or zip code for a place you are concerned about.  For example, I’ve watched weather for friends paddling around Florida on the WindMapper at the same time that I’m getting a forecast with local conditions for a lake I want to paddle in Oklahoma.  I’ve found the information to be accurate and reliable, even down to an hour-by-hour analysis of conditions as they change.

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